Former gangster Mukhtar Ansari refused bail for campaign in UP

NEW DELHI: The Delhi high court on Monday refused parole to gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari to campaign in the ongoing Uttar Pradesh elections.

Justice Mukta Gupta accepted the Election Commission’s (EC) plea to cancel parole granted to Ansari who is the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate from the Mau Sadar constituency. The UP government, too, had opposed the relief granted to the MLA by a trial court.

Mau Sadar goes to the polls on March 4, the sixth and secondlast phase of voting in UP.

“When a person in custody fills up a nomination for candidature, he does not get a vested right to be released for canvassing,” the judge said, adding Ansari’s release till March 4, from 7am to 8pm, was “akin to a temporary bail”.

“The impugned order is thus ex-facie illegal and is set aside on this count itself,” she said.

Ansari’s release would come in the way of free and fair election, the EC told the court following which it stayed the trial court order on February 17.

The UP government and the complainant in the murder case also moved the HC, opposing Ansari’s release from a Lucknow jail, saying he might influence witnesses in the 2005 murder case of BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai in which he is facing trial.

A four-time legislator from Mau Sadar, Ansari is in jail since 2005. He has more than 40 criminal cases, including those of murder and kidnapping, against him. His counsel told the HC that the representation of the people act gave Ansari the right to contest election as well as campaign.

The poll panel said there was a huge deployment of police across the state for the polls and it couldn’t spare personnel to guard Ansari . The UP government also expressed its inability to provide police cover.